incredible writing, seriously some of the best character interactions and urban fantasy esque writing i've had the pleasure of reading, regardless of medium. weirdly though, i almost wish this WERE a book. this is a personal thing, but in games like this, i'm hit with a sort of 'fear of missing out'. this game is a collection of incredible vignettes, dialogues, and stories, but hunting them down ranged from tedious to frustrating. my impulse with games like this is to try to see everything, and that's just not possible with this type of game. the clearest example of my struggle with this game was the intermission section with the phone -- i got the sense that there was a lot i COULD explore, but at the same time I got the sense that I was meant to sample some options and then move on.

i did learn to go with the flow by the end, and i look forward to replaying this sometime in the future with the knowledge I have now, but i'll never be sure if i'm seeing the full game. I don't really know if the choices i made impacted the story itself, or just determined which pieces of it I saw. As a work of fiction it is gorgeous, inspiring, and heartbreaking. As a game, though...idk?

a life sim with some intriguing fresh elements. lacking in some polish, but it seems they've really cleaned things up since the first release, and the core mechanics are solid. The quests here actually feel meaningful, and I was genuinely motivated to befriend the townsfolk and learn their schedules so we could hang out ('hanging out' as a mechanic is another big plus for me). my only real gripes are with how reliant i was on the wiki, because there's no way i would've found some of the fish and bugs necessary for shrines on my own. i'm talking obscure easter egg levels for an item thats necessary to progress. i don't think it's fair to compare to stardew, because besides being a life sim the mechanics are totally different, and a lot of those differences are positive. the game stands on its own, it's solid as is, and if it continues to improve as it has already i have high hopes for it

A fair amount of changes from the first game, for better or worse, but altogether I think it's a wash. Adding in above-water sections and a couple characters to talk to was neat. Seemed a lot easier, but that could be a combination of having played the previous game already and being less shy about looking up the location of shit (worst part of both games is when you need to find a thing but the only 'hint' you got was a PDA message you got hours ago and forgot where you were when you got it). ummm but there IS a milf

listen. no really listen. as a business management sim its genuinely solid, the mechanics build up nicely, there's decent variety without leaving anything crucial to rng. the writing is all very goofy but its so over the top that i found it more charming than annoying. and like ok. ok. the sex stuff is funny. best integration of sex in a video game that i've seen in my admittedly limited experience -- the game is fully playable and satisfying without it, it's totally skippable with different options for how nsfw you want to get. i appreciate a game that embraces how inherently silly it is

RPGMaker farming sim is an ambitious ask, and for the most part I think it's done very well. It's not as freeform as a Stardew but I don't think it needs to be, or even should be. The farming mechanics, while limited, are varied and rich enough to make the initial sprinkling of horror that much more impactful. Honestly I found myself getting more caught up in the farm mechanics and forgetting about the plot for some stretches. There's a lot of exploration and discovery at play. Plot was eh, I mainly enjoyed the subtle horror nudges you get before the endgame kicks in: a shift in music, a trail of blood you don't recall seeing there last time, a missing animal or two. But the actual scariest part of the game is the stamina and fatigue system. If you chafe at stardew's stamina limitations you'll absolutely hate this, but I love to suffer and eat 100 steamed crabs a day